By M. Vilmorin, F. M. H. S. 



S51 



sable means, but it is also beyond a doubt that of itself it is insuffi- 

 cient. Give to the wild cabbage very abundant nourishment, treat 

 it with a gardener's care, you will procure for it a more vigorous 

 developement, larger dimensions ; its leaves will become more ample, 

 its stems higher ; you will convert it into the chou cavalier or the 

 chou vert branchu ; but by these means alone you will never make of 

 it a headed cabbage.* Something else certainly has been wanting — 

 What other thing ? Or, rather what other things ? That is the 

 problem to which I invite attention, not for the cabbage only, but 

 for very many other plants. 



Being often occupied upon this enquiry, I have endeavoured to 

 satisfy myself about it by experiments ; I have pursued some upon 

 different plants with a view to ameliorate them ; upon the perennial 

 lettuce, or Lactuca perennis, on the Tetragonia, the Solanum stolonife- 

 rum, the Brassica orientalis. Many years of trials have not enabled 

 me, at present, to obtain any sensible modifications of these species. 

 But the wild carrot, which I had comprised in the same trials, has 

 improved, on the contrary, in the most decided manner ; in the 

 space of three generations I have obtained roots of it as fleshy and 

 as large as those of the Garden carrot. I have the honour to send 

 to the Horticultural Society some specimens of them, and I add to 

 them as a point of comparison and that a judgment may be formed 

 of the advance gained, some wild roots, proceeding from the same 

 fields in which were gathered the seeds for my first trials. 



This is the history of the experiment. 



In March, 1832, I made, at Verriere near Paris, in a soft and 

 deep earth, my first sowing of wild carrot. All came up ; I ob- 

 tained no root better than those of the fields. 



In 1833, the 26 April, I tried here, at Barres, Loiret, where the 



* Of this I have now an example before me : for two years I have been trying the 

 Brassica sylvestris, for the seeds of which I am indebted to the politeness of Mr. Lou- 

 don and the Rev. Thomas Bree ; the most vigorous individuals of them are those 

 which are the least disposed to form a head. 



